Ruling Rekindles Visions Of `64 `bedsheet` Ballot

December 17, 1991|By Rick Pearson and Thomas Hardy.

The unlikely prospect of an at-large legislative election as threatened last week by the Illinois Supreme Court conjured up a mix of nostalgia and horror among those who reflected on the only such event in the state`s history.

It was Nov. 3, 1964, and voters who entered polling places throughout the state were met by what has become known as ``the bedsheet ballot.``

An orange piece of paper 33 inches long, it contained 236 names of candidates running for 177 seats in the Illinois House. Democrats and Republicans each slated 118 candidates for the ballot at party conventions.

Then-Gov. Otto Kerner had vetoed a remap plan, a redistricting commission could not find a compromise and the state Supreme Court refused to take on the case or the politically difficult task. It predated a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on equal representation and voting rights laws. And it led to the existing provision in the state constitution for picking a partisan commission tiebreaker by random drawing.

It also proved to be the jumping off point for the political careers of former U.S. Sen. Adlai Stevenson III and the late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington, among many others. Popular or familiar political names were sought after as vote-getters.

Democrats, for example, nominated Stevenson, son of a former governor and two-time Democratic presidential candidate to head their ticket, and also ran John A. Kennedy, a Winnetka businessman who was no relation to the president slain less than a year before.

Republicans countered the Stevenson ploy by leading the GOP ticket with Earl D. Eisenhower, a younger brother of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower and a retired public relations executive from La Grange Park.

``The LBJ landslide carried us,`` recalled Rep. E.J. ``Zeke`` Giorgi (D-Rockford), the only legislator still serving from the 1964 election. President Lyndon Johnson was elected over Republican Barry Goldwater that year, the last time Illinois carried a Democratic presidential nominee.

``I was in the 93rd spot on the ballot, and I finished 32nd,`` Giorgi said. ``I did that without leaving Rockford. Of course, many of us didn`t know we got elected until after Christmas because of allegations of vote tampering in Du Page County.``

So strong were Johnson`s coattails and so imposing was the prospect of electing 177 House members that many voters ended up pulling a straight-ticket lever.

As a result, all of the Democrats received more votes than the top vote-getting Republican, automatically creating a 118-59 Democratic majority in the chamber. It was the last time either party had such a lopsided majority in a legislative chamber.

Stevenson led the Democrats with more than 2.4 million votes, and Eisenhower tallied just under 2.2 million votes.

Although both parties fielded what they called a ``blue ribbon slate,``

organizations carried the day-Chicago`s Democratic machine, Republican committees in the suburbs and Downstate, organized labor, the state Chamber of Commerce and other groups that Giorgi described as having ``statewide tentacles.``

``I was a representative of the entire state of Illinois. But how are you going to do it today?`` Giorgi wondered.

Indeed, things are much different now. Chicago is less of a political and population force. More people are registered to vote in the suburbs than in the city. Political organization is less important than media exposure.

Yet there still would be something said for having a political name and big-city address. ``I feel much better being from Chicago than being from Effingham in an at-large election,`` said state Sen. John Cullerton (D-Chicago), a member of an established political family.

Perhaps most importantly, minorities would not stand for an election that could severely diminish their representation, and federal courts would frown on such an unusual remedy to the redistricting impasse.

Republican Secretary of State George Ryan, a former House speaker from Kankakee, called the possibility of an at-large election next year

``frightening.`` He said: ``I think we could be headed for basically a constitutional crisis.``

Ronald Michaelson, executive director of the State Board of Elections, said that despite the state high court`s admonition Friday for an acceptable redistricting plan lest the state face a second at-large election, the ruling gave ``no clue`` about how to go about it.

``The only potential guidance is the experience in `64,`` Michaelson said.